Tag Archives: pinnacles

Sunset Light and Talus Slope

Sunset Light and Talus Slope
Sunset Light and Talus Slope

Sunset Light and Talus Slope. Kings Canyon National Park, California. July 30, 2010. © Copyright 2010 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sunset light on a tree-covered peninsula as a steep talus slope falls into evening shadows

This photograph from the first evening of a week-long 2010 southern Sierra backpacking trip reminds me of many things, but at the moment I’m recalling a particular feeling that often comes on the first night on the trail, and which is one of these moments that marks the transition away from the other world to the magical world of the backcountry. Arriving at the start of a long backcountry trip requires a fair amount of planning that begins well before the trip. Often months before (those sometimes on the previous weekend!) a plan is hatched and a group of people assembled. Soon dates are set and an itinerary comes together. As the date approaches, we collect gear together and begin to pack and make the plans for our absence. The process accelerates as the day approaches and soon we are on our way to the mountains, often arriving at a trailhead came the night before, where the familiar sensations and rhythms begin to return.

The next morning we are up early, packing away the things we brought for that first campground night and paring down our possessions to only those things we’ll carry on the trail. We tear down camp, check and double-check gear, fill up water bottles, lock cars, head to the trailhead for the inevitable photo by the sign… and we are off. The first point of breaking away (once again!) is at this moment when we start up the trail, but in some ways this is often the beginning of a mental transition that will last all day as we again become accustomed to life on the trail. We climb, we stop to filter water, we eat our first of many trail lunches, the climb becomes harder as we watch for the pass up above. Eventually we reach that pass, where we stop and sit for a while, looking into the world where we’ll spend the next few days or week(s), then we head down the other side of the pass, an act that always seals the feeling of commitment to the trip. We arrive and set up our first trail camp, once again putting specialized equipment to use, remembering just how we set up that tent and operate that stove. Then, once all these tasks are complete, we find what we came for — there is nothing left to do. So we do nothing. We walk slowly around the lake, make some photographs, sit on a rock, and quietly watch the last light on a tree-filled peninsula beneath shadowed talus slopes.


G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Cedar Breaks, Evening

Cedar Breaks, Evening - Evening light through diffused clouds illuminates the stratified and eroded formations of Cedar Breaks, Utah
Evening light through diffused clouds illuminates the stratified and eroded formations of Cedar Breaks, Utah

Cedar Breaks, Evening. Cedar Breaks National Monument. October 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light through diffused clouds illuminates the stratified and eroded formations of Cedar Breaks, Utah

Since I’ve posted on this scene previously – along with a landscape mode presentation of a similar scene – I’ll keep this one short. This photograph was made in the slightly post-sunset light on an evening when the light was softened by clouds. A smattering of trees grows in the few areas among the cliffs and hoodoos where there is apparently enough of the right kind of soil – most of this terrain is devoid of large plants.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Kearsarge Pinnacles

Kearsarge Pinnacles
Kearsarge Pinnacles

Kearsarge Pinnacles. Kings Canyon National Park, California. July 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Late afternoon like on alpine lakes, meadows, and forest below Kearsarge Pinnacles, Kings Canyon National Park.

Kearsarge Pinnacles shares its name with (Kearsarge) lakes and a (Kearsarge) pass just to the west of the Onion Valley trailhead. This is not exactly an untraveled spot in the Sierra, given that it is merely one day in on a reasonable (by east side standards) pass and that it provides access to some very popular areas of the Kings Canyon back-country and to the John Muir Trail.

I’ve been over this pass a number of times. I’ve come in this way to start trips north over Baxter Pass and south into the upper Kern River basin and over Mt. Whitney. I exited here some years back on the ninth day of a trip that started at Bishop Pass and crossed a series of JMT high passes including (in addition to Bishop) Mather, Pinchot, and Glenn passes.

Here late afternoon light, filtered by clouds, illuminates the granite benches and scattered trees above a couple of the upper lakes in the basin. Despite the obvious impressive beauty of this location, I find that it presents some photographic challenges, at least when I try to photograph “grand views” of the area and the surrounding landscape. One of them, at least in my experience, is that the light angles can be a bit tricky. For example, as the sun sets it isn’t quite far enough north to light up the slopes of the pinnacles, and some of the interesting foreground subjects go into shadow as the light warms up. On this evening I made one of those timing discoveries that I’ll have to remember and apply the next time I’m there – from about the location of this photograph there was a minute or two of very interesting light right on the upper edges of the closer ridges… which I wasn’t quite quick enough to capture!

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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